ABQmom, if you want to get them to follow the law you may need either a crash course in reading the law (I did this one year, it wasn't fun but very edifying)-- or an educational advocate. Or both.
If you choose to read: the book From Emotions to Advocacy is good, and the same people run the website wrightslaw.com. The site is poorly laid out and has lots of ads for their stuff, but full of good information. I also recommend looking up the actual IDEA statute and the updates to it, and reading the relevant parts of them. Wrightslaw often provides guidance about what bits to focus on: if you search "functional" on their site, they will give you pointers to the precise places in the law where this is spelled out. (Maybe this direct link will work:
http://www.wrightslaw.com/howey/iep.functional.perf.htm ). Note that you don't have to buy the text of IDEA from them, you can google it and the text is online.
Advocates: we have at various times had both a free one from the state Legal Rights Service (which helps people with disabilities access things they are entitled to)-- and a paid one. They were both very good, but we got more mileage from the one we paid, only because the state had limits on what their person could do for us in our particular situation. We have sent the paid one to negotiate things on our behalf that they would never have given us if we had asked ourselves. It made a difference and sure took some pressure off me.
On the IQ wiggle room: is it spelled out how much room, and for what disabilities, or is the identification at the school's discretion? You will need to be super-strategic about this, on two fronts at once. I sympathize.
HTH,
DeeDee
